Thought online advertising meant just web versions of print ads? Think again!

Although print advertising is still effective, it’s important to tap into the new world of online advertising, since this is the prime source of information for some market segments.  And, research from various sources (Nielson, MRI, eMedia Strategist, and our own analysis of media kits and publication data over the years) repeatedly shows there’s minimal overlap between people that get their information from the web and those that obtain it from print, so if you want to reach your entire target audience, you need to use both advertising channels.

Online advertising takes many forms – e-newsletters, banner ads, webinars, white papers, virtual trade shows, videos, podcasts, social media, pay per click…the list goes on.  With all the technology available, an advertisement can be much more than just words or an image.  Online ads can incorporate motion and sound—something a print magazine ad is incapable of doing.

Online Advantages
A major advantage to online advertising is accessibility.  Unlike print, where the ad reaches only a certain amount of people, online ads have virtually no limit and can reach anyone in the world around the clock. Long after the advertisement is posted it can continue to brand your product or company.

Online advertising also provides something print advertising could rarely deliver: information about the people who are actually responding…clicking on your ads, downloading your whitepapers and tuning in to your webinars. While print advertising can provide you with circulation data and readership details, it can’t provide the names and contact information for the last 10 people who really, actually viewed your information (though the amount of data provided varies by publication).

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If you are not using Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on your website, you should be. It’s free and easy to use. It’s all transparent to those viewing your site, but provides you with a great deal of good information. After spending the money and resources to send potential customers to your website with various marcom tactics, measuring the effectiveness of those efforts is the next step in a strong campaign.

So, what information can you glean from Google Analytics?

Average Page Depth
There is a Content Optimization>Content Performance>Depth of Visit report that tells you the average number of pages on a site that visitors view during a single session. This report lets you see if your site architecture is working properly as well as if people are finding what they need and taking actions suggested by your content.

Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave from that page without going to any other page. Seeing bounce rates on home pages of around 50% are typical in our experience. This can be (most likely) that the visitor is not looking for what you have (perhaps a wrong click or misinterpretation of a search engine listing) or the visitor found what he or she was looking for, like a phone number or address (you always put your phone number and address on each page of your website, don’t you?).

Hits
Many people misinterpret a hit as being a visitor. It’s not. A hit is a request by the visitor’s browser for a file – a file of any kind. If you have an older site that was built in “slices,” opening a single page could deliver dozens of hits. These files can be an HTML page, an image, a video, a script or many other file types. This is important information for those analyzing traffic data, but other reports, including page views, new visitors and unique visitors, might be more useful for general business purposes.

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